]]>…ON PRIVACY: Like me, my mother (female parental unit) is a writer. Unlike Heinlein’s rules for writers, she did not, when I was growing up, have a private room where she went to write. Her typewriter — an IBM Selectric (pre-golf-ball) — was on a desk in front of the back window of our dining room in the rental house in Oakley (Cincinnati) where we lived for the latter half of the Sixties and up to the Bicentennial. There was always a sheet of paper in the machine, and her progress on that page was readily visible to all passersby.

We were forbidden to read on pain of… (whatever. The punishment was never specified; never had to be.)

The notion was that Mom’s writing was personal and private — as sacred as her (or our own) innermost thoughts — UNTIL and UNLESS she chose to share it. I was allowed to read the novel she wrote (and would love to see it published, for all its 50s-era post apocalypse setting and tropes are outdated). But only on her conditions.

It was an early lesson in the nature of privacy. Even though a thing is in plain view, in public or private circumstances, it is not yours to dispose of. It belongs exclusively to its creator or owner and consuming — or even looking at it — is taboo. Including the so-called “plain view” principle enshrined in post-constitutional case law.

There is no exception in the Constitution for cases where a person’s “persons, papers, or effects” are in plain view or in “public”. The plain wording of the Fourth Amendment brooks no such exception and, in the very fact of the words, makes it clear that the “plain view” or “in public” exception carved out by agents of the state is or ought to be null and void. (Since when are agents of the state fit to define the limits of state authority under the Constitution? Yes, of course, the courts are nominated as judges of such in that document, but there must be limits set by the actual text of it. thus far and no farther.) If a thing is not properly yours, you have no right to dispose of it. And that goes double for agents of the state.

However, it should be recognized (and obeyed) that the language of most of the articles of the Bill of Rights does not limit its intent to the state or its agents. The language of the Fourth, for instance:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

…it should be noted, does not limit its scope to actions of the state, nor does it brook the notion of ANY exception. It is absolute in its scope. “Shall not” has a specific and clear meaning when used in law. And it is universal. Any and all actors must respect and guarantee this security. Including but not limited to the state and its agents.

The same may be said, by the way, of the language of the Second Amendment.

The clarity, universality, and absoluteness of the language of the Fourth makes it clear that, if an agent of the state is engaged in a lawful (warranted) search, and stumbles upon something not named in the warrant, that something is not admissible in court and may not be used as a pretext for a warrant or further investigation. The principle is not, “If it’s in plain view, it’s fair game.” It’s: “If it was not specifically named in the warrant authorizing the search, you didn’t see it. Could not have seen it, in fact. Since you did not get legal permission to look for it.”

Statists will argue that this is an unfair burden on agents of the state. But the notion of constitutional liberty is not founded on the convenience of the state, but on the comfort and freedom of the people. In the vernacular: “Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?”

The same principle applies for non-state actors. For example, the phone company (neither the manufacturer of your equipment nor the carrier of your signal) does not have the legitimate permission to share your data — any data — with any other player, state actor or non-, without a warrant issued by a judge of appropriate authority and under the limits set out in the Amendment as to specificity. This would — or should — eviscerate Google’s entire business model.

Further, I would argue that those entities whose business model or raison d’etre includes the possession and handling of personal information or meta-data should have and exercise a fiduciary responsibility to protect such data from assaults from all comers (including the state) and that the courts should be instructed to pay such duty the same respect afforded the confessional, and client-provider relationships in the law and medicine.

It should be clear that the courts have not read the clear text of the law thusly and should be reined in by legislation.

Let us call this an absolutist position on privacy — one favoring the people’s natural civil right of privacy. After all, if the notion of privacy can be extended to a license to kill unborn children, even up to an after birth, it certainly ought to cover a far more reasonable interpretation.

]]>http://www.babytrollblog.com/the-liberty-position/feed/0Merry Fucking Christmas with Love from Miscrosofthttp://www.babytrollblog.com/merry-fucking-christmas-love-miscrosoft/
Sun, 24 Dec 2017 06:13:20 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5340THE SATURDAY BEFORE Christmas — the 23d — Microsoft chose to push a Windows update, which, according to what I see, included the ability to link the computer to an Android phone, and the takeover of all image files on … Continue reading →

]]>THE SATURDAY BEFORE Christmas — the 23d — Microsoft chose to push a Windows update, which, according to what I see, included the ability to link the computer to an Android phone, and the takeover of all image files on the system by an app called Photos.

Some background: I’m a long-time graphic arts professional. I started using microcomputers for art and design around 1990, when the Wintel operating system was Windows 3. The illustration app was CorelDRAW! (versison 2 at the time, though it was quickly replaced by version 3). The bitmap editor was … well, there wasn’t one. Some brief period later, Macromedia brought Freehand to the PC and Adobe brought forth a version of Illustrator. Then Aldus came out with Photostyler. That was the one. We bought it where I worked. It came with a scanner. No. Photostyler was bundled with the scanner, not the scanner with Photostyler, if you get the difference.

Whereas the Mac had always integrated the handling of fonts and image files with the OS, Windows made little provision for this. So the user was forced to think for himself. Some of us though of that as a feature, not a bug. Over the next year or so — before Windows 3.11 came out and vastly improved things for us — I and my colleagues, developed a system for handling fonts and our files, partially built of a combination of best-of-breed apps, and partially of a certain protocol and discipline of file and folder naming and handling practices.

Over time, things have changed. The OS has grown up. The fussy OCD treatment of font files, and system folders has relaxed — or the need for it has slackened some. Some capabilities have been added to the OS (though not nearly as many as Miscrosoft would have you believe — the OS has changed remarkably little since the early ’90s in some ways) Please remember I am talking of the days before the Internet blew up. Things were quite primitive then. I used to say, “The very best that’s out there — the state of the art — is barely adequate to the task at hand.”

Over time, we the users, and the beta-testers and peer support sysops and forum staff, arrived at a modus vivendi with software companies. Rule one was — and, really, always has been: DO NOT ALTER USER DATA. Period. End of discussion — full stop.

For the most part, with a few notable exceptions — I’m not looking at Adobe or Corel or anybody, really, because they all did it — that rule, that Prime Directive of Personal Computing — has been honored pretty well.

And for most of that time, the difference between professional apps and the kiddy cars was that the pro stuff gave the user adult controls over where his data resided, how the software accessed it, and how it was visible OUTSIDE of the program.

The amateur, kiddy-car stuff took (and takes) over and decides where the data is allowed to reside and who (in terms of software) has access to it, and it sets the system defaults as what’s to be done with a file and what programs you can open it with. Bleah. Crap.

Thus we come to Photos. Now I’m pretty raw on that site because I’ve been fighting with Dropbox. My idea is that only stuff I want there gets put there. Dropbox seems to want to assume it gets all the data on my system — and it’s going to pop up windows that interfere with my shit whenever I plug in something to a USB port — even if it’s just a phone or a tablet to charge, Dropbox wants to upload all the data in its memory — to the Dropbox folder.

Which won’t work, because I have a specific organizational protocol to follow as to where I put files. So I can find them later. So they’re kept with other files relevant to the project(s) they’re for. Plus: I don’t trust the cloud, so I’m not likely to put my copyrighted, for-sale work product on somebody else’s computer. Not to mention, I have a responsibility to my clients to maintain their confidentiality, and can’t really be sure of that if the work I’m doing for them leaves my direct control. I know that many of my colleagues think I’m odd and quirky (old fashioned and out of date) but I don’t think the time of man has anything to do with principles. Either they apply always, or they never did. There’s no such thing as an outdated principle.

Military and intelligence types have an assumption that, if somebody puts a lot of effort into developing a tool or a weapon, it’s a pretty safe bet that evinces an intent to use it for the purpose it’s meant for. If somebody spends millions of dollar on a system that can capture my data, I feel justified in thinking they might — all protests of innocence nothwithstanding — intend someday to capture my data. In which case, I’d be a fool to trust them with said data. No. Dropbox. You don’t get my photos before I’ve even opened them in Photoshop. So I want to store them on my computer — take note: **MY** computer — where and as I plot will assist me with my work, and not where the dumb arrogance of a software engineer leads him to assume is best.

So, immediately after the final restart of my system after the Windows update (that’s where we came in — remember?), I noticed that the image that has been my desktop for YEARS (and two computers, to tell the truth) was missing. In trying to rein in the settings, I discovered that the large tree of folders (that’s one feature of my file organization — endlessly branching trees of folders branching out from a single parent folder one step down from the root directory of the drive — which is meant to make it easy to back up the contents by mirroring them to another storage device) where the image was to be stored … was gone. !!!!! As it is THE directory tree in which I store ALL of my graphic work, representing my life’s work, you betcha damned skippy I was pissed off. And more than a little frantic.

So the lesson here is 1) never trust anybody in computer tech. Don’t care who they are, they’re out for themselves and don’t care much for fiduciary responsibility. You remember the old Quaker motto? “I will not cheat thee, but I will do my level best to outwit thee.” Sort of like “Minbari never lie.” (But they never tell the truth.) If you trust your data to them, more the fool you. And 2) never ask, “Whose computer is it, anyway?” Don’t get too clever with how you name folders — especially mission critical folders. The OS may one days decide one of them is redundant and delete it.

]]>They Say You Shouldn’thttp://www.babytrollblog.com/they-say-you-shouldnt-2/
Fri, 22 Sep 2017 03:32:37 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5332FALL IN LOVE WITH your writing. That you should be willing to kill your children. All of that. Nevertheless, I think this might be one of the best scenes I’ve ever written that doesn’t come to a conclusion. And, to … Continue reading →

]]>FALL IN LOVE WITH your writing. That you should be willing to kill your children. All of that. Nevertheless, I think this might be one of the best scenes I’ve ever written that doesn’t come to a conclusion.

“Oh.” The big climb-down. “Sorry. I must have missed it when I was cleaning.”

“So who is that?” She in the photo was incredibly beautiful in an exotic way. Gypsy? Very romantic, nevertheless, with raven hair in ringlets and deep, dark, soulful, anime eyes.

“Morgan.”

“Wassa Morgan?” Xe wasn’t confrontational, just curious. She could tell instantly from the Elf princess’s reaction that she might as well have shouted a deadly insult and thrown down a chain mail gauntlet. “I’m sorry,” she blurted in a burst of sudden contrition. “Forget I asked.”

Rowan sighed. “No. I’m sorry. You should know. Morgan was my roommate when we were both getting our doctorates at the Thaum. I stayed to do post-doc work here; she went to work at Hephaestus Industries, taking a place on the Executive Action team — the Nine Walkers.”

“That was Mitchell Drummond’s bunch,” Xe realized out loud.

“Yes,” Rowan said. It was hard to imagine a word that could be freighted with as much weltschmertz and agony of the heart that wasn’t no. But Rowan didn’t cry. Only looked like she might. Quite a concession for the normally stone-faced Elf royal.

Light dawned in the dark dolly’s mind. “She was your girlfriend.”

“And I hers.”

“She was killed.”

“In Athens. By Astarté.” Rowan’s eyes remained hooded. She would not meet Xe’s gaze, no matter how sympathetic and loving.

“So you owe Gabrielle…”

“After a fashion.” Which might have been the only thing that had held her back from a full-on physical assault of Redpath and Drummond on being told that the Genesis undertaking had been officially unsanctioned work and she was unlikely to get course credit for her work on it — that the newly-born of the project, Gabrielle East had somehow managed to catch the Goddess Astarté in a distracted moment and take off her head with a Japanese sword. Even so, Rowan had left the mark of her hand on Redpath’s cheek. Xe hadn’t been there at that precise moment — only later that night — but she’d heard about it, nearly in real time. Albeit from sources less-than-reliable. She and Rowan were among a very select handful of folks who knew that the Gabrielle dolly had survived the night of her Genesis and was hunted by the Babylonian God Marduk. Wherever she was, she had yet to be found, (it had only been two days, after all), but were she to reappear on campus, it would be the death of her, for sure.

]]>Callsign Baby Trollhttp://www.babytrollblog.com/callsign-baby-troll/
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 16:15:45 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5328A SNIPPET FROM the current work in progress to exposit the origin of Dolly’s nickname, Baby Troll. Callsign: Baby Troll The Gabrielle Dolly When she and Aphrodite first arrived in Camp Meander via teleport, in September of ’97, the recruit … Continue reading →

]]>A SNIPPET FROM the current work in progress to exposit the origin of Dolly’s nickname, Baby Troll.

Callsign: Baby Troll

The Gabrielle Dolly

When she and Aphrodite first arrived in Camp Meander via teleport, in September of ’97, the recruit company had been already a week into its training cycle. The dolly had, therefor, considerable catching up to do. She imagined and was subsequently told that there had been much debate as to whether it was wise to put her in such a position. It was seen by some as setting her up for failure. But Aphrodite was antsy and wanted her charge embarked on some activity — and meaningful activity at that; make-work was unacceptable. She asserted that the dolly would suffer far greater developmental damage from inactivity than from any possible failure. Further, she claimed, the dolly would not fail in any case.

An assessment with which the dolly was rather in greater agreement before she embarked on her training than she would be later on.

Until she got caught up, the dolly was subject to much harsh, no-nonsense treatment at the hands of the instructors, as she was always the last in her platoon at everything. Not only was she inexperienced and playing catchup, she was also smaller, lighter, and weaker than her platoon mates. Each new obstacle, each new task was to her a greater challenge than it would ever be to her comrades — even the billilaala, who were more her size.

It started the first day as she fell in on the parade ground with the rest and ended up at the wrong end of her rank. To be fair, they’d told her to line up according to height. Since everybody was taller than she, she figured it was mox nix — she’d always be the shortest and it made no never-mind which end she was on. She picked an end at random and took her position there. It was, however, a lapse which could not fail to attract the eye and ire of the lead instructor — Gunnery Sergeant Meru, a reputed martinet born in the Patkar Hills of Northern Burma and emigrant to the Canadian Rockies.

“What have we here?” the towering frekun ang said as she approached the dolly’s position at the wrong end of the rank. “Is this a baby Troll?”

Later, they would have better discipline, but it was early days, still, and the platoon had yet to learn better than to laugh.

“You lot think that’s funny, do you?” Meru asked in her very best parade ground voice. “Let’s see how funny you find it after a morning on the Main Loop. By squads. Double-time… HARCH!”

The Main Loop was a fifty-mile track that circumscribed most of the base. It was not paved. It was not level. It was cleared on occasion when NCOs thought some recruit unit needed to work on its brush-clearing skills. But otherwise, it was left alone, and the vegetation overgrew it with wild abandon. It was poorly marked. Passage through the woods just there was colloquially known as bush-whacking. It was held as an article of faith by all recruits that some alleged portions of the Loop existed only in the collective imaginations of the junior training NCOs, who accompanied trainee units on the route — and woe betide you if you mistook the trail. They might even send you back to start over. Independent Study, it was called.

For having been the cause of the platoon’s having to run the Loop — nobody ever walked the whole thing — the dolly caught holy Hell. She also earned a nickname from the experience. Nicknames were uncomfortable things to earn in Basic in the Troll Guard, so the instructors generally tried to find one for everybody — to spread the misery around evenly and find appropriate radio callsigns for everyone. The dolly’s was, from that day forth, Baby Troll. She’d be forever trying to live it down — until she learned to make it a badge of honor and accept it as her callsign. It’s worth noting that, once she’d made that accommodation with reality — as the Americans put it, once she’d embraced the suck — she was generally treated with greater respect.

]]>Staring at the Wallshttp://www.babytrollblog.com/staring-at-the-walls/
Mon, 21 Aug 2017 04:19:27 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5304Mural at Katharina’s Cafe-Konditorei, 8th & Washington, Newport, in progress at post time. (Click to embiggen.) WE SET OUT WITH A specific collection of goals — places we wanted to photograph on this trip: the new Edie Harper on the … Continue reading →

WE SET OUT WITH A specific collection of goals — places we wanted to photograph on this trip: the new Edie Harper on the American Building, the new image of Rosemary Clooney (?) at Liberty & Pleasant Street, Central Fairmount School, and so-on.

As usual, our tendency to follow our noses once we got started sidetracked us almost immediately. Leaving the Bob Evans in Newport Shopping Center, where we had breakfast, Toni wanted to stop at a McDonald’s to get a cup of Diet Coke to sip on over the afternoon. I knew that there was a McDonald’s a block or two further out Monmouth street, so we headed there. Sitting in the drive-by lane, I was struck by the shape of a tree looming over the houses opposite.

It stands curbside between two houses on Linden Road which runs between Newport and Southgate, a gorgeous little neighborhood of funky craftsman houses mixed with early Victorian brick.

Rolling north on Monmouth, Toni spotted something and requested a detour. I don’t recall the exact sight that drew us aside, but we soon ended up circling (four or five times) the same blocks between Saratoga, Washington, Sixth and Ninth, with an occasional jog over to Monmouth. Along the way, the mural seen in my rearview mirror (above) caught my eye and we ended up circling blocks to get to within snapping distance of that.

Of course there are a lot of pix taken I’m not putting up here. I have plans for them, though. Toni has put up a bunch of what she took (including better shots of the mural above) on Facebook, so, if you’re her FB friend, you can check those out.

One of the cooler things that Cincinnati does is permit this group of artsy types, called Art Works, to paint murals on walls — buildings, retaining walls, you-name-it — to beautify the city. It’s been going on in one form or another since the ’70s, when the effort was called Urban Walls and there were a half-dozen of them all over downtown. Now there are hundreds, scattered over the whole city and in other cities as well. (There are a couple in Newport, for example.)

One of our famous families here, immigrants from a town upriver on the Kentucky side, are the Clooneys. Rosemary, Nick, and George. I’m pretty sure that this mural is meant to represent Rosemary, who was an icon in local TV and radio in the forties and fifties. It’s on the side of a building of railroad flats at the corner of Pleasant and Liberty Streets in the world-famous Over the Rhine.

Oh, and we did finally manage to get to one area I had as a goal for the day — Fairmount. The city is building out a project called the Lick Run Greenway between Queen City and Westwood avenues from State/Beekman out almost to Wyoming where it comes north down from Price Hill. I had noticed in Lyft trips through the area that there was rapid demolition being done and that, if the picturesque scenes were to be captured before they’re all gone, we’d have to get out there toot sweet. It’s not an area I suspect anybody is nostalgic about. For as long as I can remember, it’s been a low-rent dump, blighted, benighted, and all that, which is why the city is tearing it down and building a monument to the politicians spending our tax dollars on it. No doubt, it will be pretty.

There are a few gems being lost in the process. The old St. Francis Hospital, (featured a week or so ago on this blog), being one. Another is a bit of a surprise, nestled on a hillside alongside vertiginous White Street — Central Fairmount School. Which, as far as I know, is to be abandoned or torn down, unlike many of its contemporaries elsewhere in the city.

]]>Reservoir Wall, Eden Park, 8-19-17http://www.babytrollblog.com/reservoir-wall-eden-park-8-19-17/
Sun, 20 Aug 2017 04:41:51 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5301SOME FORTY-ODD years ago, the Park Board blew out the south wall of the reservoir in Eden Park and built a new reflecting pool atop it, providing the park’s users with a bilevel play field. In the time since, the … Continue reading →

]]>SOME FORTY-ODD years ago, the Park Board blew out the south wall of the reservoir in Eden Park and built a new reflecting pool atop it, providing the park’s users with a bilevel play field. In the time since, the upper level has been used mostly for quotidian recreation — frisbee throws, dog chases, et al and fairs and festivals, while the lower level is used a a baseball diamond, basketball court, and so-forth, while the top of the wall itself is used as a place for romantic walks and imaginary lovers’ leaps. (Never heard of the last, but it could be done.).

(Click to embiggen.)

I’ve always thought this to be a subject best treated in grayscale, thus the utterly desaturated tones.

]]>Extra Texturehttp://www.babytrollblog.com/extra-texture/
Sun, 13 Aug 2017 17:29:36 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5286THIS ONE CAUGHT MY EYE while I was on a ride with passenger. And, for the first time ever, I circled back around after I dropped her off and went to where I could get the shot. The building is … Continue reading →

]]>THIS ONE CAUGHT MY EYE while I was on a ride with passenger. And, for the first time ever, I circled back around after I dropped her off and went to where I could get the shot.

The building is in the South Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati, right by Walnut Hills and Corryville, at the corner of Union Street and Reading Road. I took the shot from my car while standing on Bowman Terrace, a block away. Minimal color processing in Photoshop.

]]>Katmundahttp://www.babytrollblog.com/katmunda/
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 15:17:07 +0000http://www.babytrollblog.com/?p=5270LADY JANE GREY named after the famous pretender queen of England, played by Helena Bonham Carter in the BBC Production of the same name. (Click to embiggen.) This image was taken under low-light conditions at under 18 inches with my … Continue reading →

]]>LADY JANE GREY named after the famous pretender queen of England, played by Helena Bonham Carter in the BBC Production of the same name.

(Click to embiggen.)

This image was taken under low-light conditions at under 18 inches with my Nokia Lumia 1020 camera phone and processed using Google’s Nik Collection, Color Efex Pro4, in Photoshop. Saved from flattened .psd to .jpg with maximum image quality selected.